World

PARIS — Facing off in Europe’s capitals, Russia and the West began trying to build the elements of a diplomatic solution to Europe’s gravest crisis since the Cold War — even as the West appeared increasingly resigned to an entrenched Russian presence in Crimea. 

NATO hit back by putting Russia on suspension, and the European Union extended $15 billion in aid to Ukraine, matching the amount the country’s fugitive president accepted from Moscow to turn his back on an EU trade accord.

As peace efforts progressed in Paris and Brussels, volatility reigned on the ground in Ukraine: A special UN envoy visiting Crimea came under threat by armed men who forced him to leave the region. Meanwhile, hundreds of demonstrators, many chanting “Russia! Russia!” stormed a government building in eastern Ukraine — renewing fears that turmoil could spill out of Crimea and engulf other Russian-dominated parts of Ukraine.

Ukraine’s prime minister told The Associated Press in his first interview since taking office that he still feared Russian President Vladimir Putin might attempt more land grabs: “Mr. President,” Arseniy Yatsenyuk said, “stop this mess”.

Yatsenyuk vowed to keep Crimea as part of Ukraine, but expressed openness to granting it more autonomy. Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andriy Deshchytsia, told the AP that pro-Russian citizens in Crimea must be willing to replace armed forces with international observers if they want a vote on more self-rule.

But most of the bargaining chips Wednesday belonged to Russia, whose troops are fanned out across Crimea and control most of its strategic facilities.

A growing chorus of prominent American voices expressed resignation that Crimea was lost to Russia: “I’m not optimistic they’re going to leave,” said Michael McFaul, who served as Obama’s ambassador to Russia until last week.

US Secretary of State John Kerry, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and several European counterparts conducted an intense round of diplomacy in Paris to try to find an exit strategy in Ukraine. While negotiations were inconclusive, top European officials expressed optimism that at least the two sides were talking — and making progress.

“For the first time, starting with this meeting in Paris, something moved in the right direction,” said French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius.

Lavrov, speaking in Spain before meeting with Kerry, warned against Western support of what Moscow views as a Ukrainian coup, saying that could encourage government takeovers elsewhere.

“If we indulge those who are trying to rule our great, kind historic neighbour,” Lavrov said, “we must understand that a bad example is infectious.”

Russia expressed openness to international mediation, and the talks were a “work in progress”, said a French diplomat on condition of anonymity because of government policy. But a major sticking point has been Moscow’s refusal to recognise Ukraine’s new government much less sit down at the table with them.

“I wish I could give you some good news,” said Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, “but unfortunately it hasn’t been possible to bring together the foreign ministers of Ukraine and Russia”.

Wednesday’s Paris gathering, originally scheduled to deal with the Syrian refugee crisis, came after Putin appeared to step back from the brink of war, telling reporters in his first comments since the Crimea takeover that he has no intention to “fight the Ukrainian people”.

NATO tried to apply pressure on Moscow in its own talks with Russia in Brussels.

The Western alliance’s secretary-general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said that ambassadors for the alliances 28 member states decided after a meeting with their Russian counterpart to suspend plans for a joint mission as well as all civilian and military meetings.

Rasmussen said because of Russia’s military action in Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula “the entire range of NATO-Russia cooperation [is] under review”. Rasmussen said the alliance will continue to meet with Moscow at the political level but insisted that halting all other cooperation “sends a very clear message to Russia”.

One key piece of leverage that the West has over nearly bankrupt Ukraine: Hard cash. The three months of protests that triggered Ukraine’s crisis erupted when Yanukovych accepted $15 billion in aid from Putin in exchange for dropping an economic partnership deal with the EU. On Wednesday, the EU matched the aid — which the Russians withdrew after Yanukovych’s downfall — and the US topped that up with an additional $1 billion.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s former prime minister — the heroine of Ukraine’s 2004-2005 Orange Revolution and Yanukovych’s arch-enemy — called on the West to force Russia to withdraw troops from Crimea.

Yulia Tymoshenko, who was released from prison two weeks ago, said that any negotiations about Ukraine’s future should be conducted directly between the United States, the European Union and Russia — and insisted no compromises should be made to appease Moscow.

“We believe that the aggressor must leave without any conditions,” Tymoshenko told the AP in an interview.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said a key demand was for Russia’s military to pull back to its Black Sea bases to show a tangible de-escalation, but he did not press on a Thursday deadline as European diplomats had initially warned. EU talks about possible sanctions against Russia were scheduled Thursday in Brussels.

The EU on Wednesday also froze the assets of 18 people held responsible for misappropriating state funds in Ukraine, echoing similar action in Switzerland and Austria. The list, which likely targeted officials in the ousted government or businessmen related to them, were withheld until Thursday to prevent anyone from withdrawing the funds at the last minute.

Russia has suggested that it will meet any sanctions imposed by Western governments with a tough response, and Putin has warned that those measures could incur serious “mutual damage”.

In Crimea, UN special envoy Robert Serry was threatened by 10 to 15 armed men as he was leaving naval headquarters in Crimea, said UN deputy secretary general Jan Eliasson. When the men ordered Serry to go to the airport, Serry refused — but then found himself trapped because his car was blocked, Eliasson said.

The Dutch envoy was later spotted by reporters in a coffee shop, as men in camouflage outfits stood outside. He got into a van with the men, and was taken to Simferopol airport.

Later, an Associated Press reporter found Serry in the business class lounge of the Simferopol airport.

“I’m safe. My visit was interrupted for reasons that I cannot understand,” the Dutch diplomat said in a statement to AP. He said nothing more.

BEIJING — China is targeting growth of about 7.5 per cent in 2014, Premier Li Keqiang said Wednesday, promising to “declare war” on pollution as the government pledges to transform the world’s second-largest economy.

Li’s speech to the annual session of the National People’s Congress, which meets to approve policies decided by the ruling Communist party, highlighted the authorities’ plans to shift the economy to a more sustainable model.

“We must keep economic development as the central task and maintain a proper growth rate,” Li told the parliament, speaking before a backdrop of giant red flags in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People.

“On the basis of careful comparison and repeatedly weighing various factors, as well as considering what is needed and what is possible, we set a growth target of around 7.5 per cent.”

China’s three decades of rapid industrialisation have transformed its economy and seen incomes soar, but have also brought severe environmental consequences including smog that regularly blankets its cities.

Li said pollution was a “red-light warning” against inefficiency, as he sought to address public concerns on issues ranging from poisoned waterways to food safety.

“We will declare war against pollution and fight it with the same determination we battled poverty,” he said.

Authorities have repeatedly pledged action in recent months to improve the environment, but experts warn that implementation will be key.

In recent years air pollution indicators have been published more widely, but the country relies heavily on coal for energy and accounts for around half the world’s consumption.

The government will shut down 50,000 small coal-fired furnaces this year, clean up coal-burning power plants and remove six million high-emission vehicles from the roads, Li said.

Li also pledged cuts to “outdated production capacity” in industries such as steel and cement and reforms to pricing for household utilities.

“We will definitely enjoy more peace, happiness and prosperity as well as greater development,” he said.

But experts say implementation of such pledges is crucial, and Hong Kong-based Societe Generale economist Yao Wei described the tasks Li set out as a “mission impossible”.

“The new government promises to speed up reform, manage debt risks, fight pollution, and yet maintain 7.5 per cent economic growth all at the same time,” she wrote, adding of the proclaimed anti-pollution measures: “None of these are exactly pro-growth.”

Prosperity key to legitimacy 

The government also unveiled a 12.2 per cent increase in defence spending to 808.23 billion yuan ($132 billion), another double-digit budget percentage rise for the world’s largest military.

The world’s second-largest economy grew 7.7 per cent in 2013, the same as in 2012 — which was the slowest rate of growth since 1999.

Rising prosperity is a key part of the Communist Party’s claim to legitimacy in China, and the government usually sets a conservative economic growth target that it regularly exceeds.

The figure is closely watched by analysts for insight into the leadership’s thinking about the economy and how they expect it to perform, as well as what policy initiatives they intend to pursue.

Keeping the target unchanged from last year suggests the government wants to stress stability as it carries out promised economic reforms, analysts said.

“On one hand it serves as a signal to stabilise expectations, while on the other it shows policymakers have confidence in maintaining stable momentum in the overall economy,” said Ma Xiaoping, Beijing-based economist for British bank HSBC.

Consumption new focus 

China’s leadership says it wants to transform the growth model away from an over-reliance on often wasteful investment, and instead make private demand the driver for the country’s future development.

They expect the change to result in slower but more sustainable rates of expansion.

China’s once regular annual double-digit growth rates have been on a slowing trend, and the 2013 result meant GDP growth had been in single figures for three consecutive years for the first time since 2002.

The NPC comes after a major Communist Party meeting known as the Third Plenum in November that flagged economic reforms, including allowing the market to play a “decisive” role in the economy.

“Reform has brought us the greatest benefits,” Li said, adding there would be more changes to the financial sector, such as allowing financial institutions greater authority to set interest rates.

China began allowing banks to decide their own lending rates in July last year, but still sets deposit rates by administrative order.

He also called for keeping China’s yuan currency “basically stable at an appropriate, balanced level”, while expanding the band within which it is allowed to float against other units and moving towards capital account convertibility.

Financial authorities allow the yuan, also known as the renminbi, to move up or down 1 per cent daily on either side of a mid-point which they say is set by polling market-makers.

MOSCOW — Vladimir Putin talked tough but cooled tensions in the Ukraine crisis in his first comments since its president fled, saying Russia has no intention “to fight the Ukrainian people” but reserved the right to use force. As the Russian president held court Tuesday in his personal residence, US Secretary of State John Kerry met with Kiev’s fledgling government and Moscow agreed to sit down with NATO.

Although nerves remained on edge in Crimea, with Russian troops firing warning shots to ward off Ukrainian soldiers, global markets catapulted higher on tentative signals that the Kremlin was not seeking to escalate the conflict. Kerry brought moral support and a $1 billion aid package to a Ukraine fighting to fend off bankruptcy.

Lounging in an arm-chair before Russian tricolour flags, Putin delivered a characteristic performance filled with earthy language, macho swagger and sarcastic jibes, accusing the West of promoting an “unconstitutional coup” in Ukraine. At one point he compared the US role in Ukraine to an experiment with “lab rats”.

But the overall message appeared to be one of de-escalation: “It seems to me [Ukraine] is gradually stabilising,” Putin said. “We have no enemies in Ukraine. Ukraine is a friendly state.” He tempered those comments by warning that Russia was willing to use “all means at our disposal” to protect ethnic Russians in the country.

Significantly, Russia agreed to a NATO request to hold a special meeting to discuss Ukraine on Wednesday in Brussels, opening up a possible diplomatic channel in a conflict that still holds monumental hazards and uncertainties.

While the threat of military confrontation retreated somewhat Tuesday, both sides ramped up economic feuding in their struggle over Ukraine: Russia hit its nearly broke neighbour with a termination of discounts on natural gas, while the US announced a $1 billion aid package in energy subsidies to Ukraine.

“We are going to do our best [to help you]. We are going to try very hard,” Kerry said upon arriving in Kiev. “We hope Russia will respect the election that you are going to have.”

Ukraine’s finance minister, who has said Ukraine needs $35 billion to get through this year and next, was meeting Tuesday with officials from the International Monetary Fund.

World stock markets, which panicked the previous day, clawed back a large chunk of their losses Tuesday on signs that Russia was backpedaling. Gold, the Japanese yen and US treasuries — all seen as safe havens — returned some of their gains. Russia’s RTS index, which slumped 12 per cent on Monday rose 6.2 per cent Tuesday. In the US, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 1.4 per cent.

“Confidence in equity markets has been restored as the standoff between Ukraine and Russia is no longer on red alert,” said David Madden, market analyst at IG.

Russia took over the strategic peninsula of Crimea on Saturday, placing its troops around the peninsula’s ferry, military bases and border posts. Two Ukrainian warships remained anchored in the Crimean port of Sevastopol, blocked from leaving by Russian ships.

“Those unknown people without insignia who have seized administrative buildings and airports ... what we are seeing is a kind of velvet invasion,” said Russian military analyst Alexander Golts.

The territory’s enduring volatility was put in stark relief Tuesday morning: Russian troops, who had taken control of the Belbek air base, fired warning shots into the air as around 300 Ukrainian soldiers, who previously manned the airfield, demanded their jobs back.

About a dozen soldiers at the base warned the Ukrainians, who were marching unarmed, and said they would shoot the Ukrainians if they continued to march towards them.

The Ukrainian troops vowed to hold whatever ground they had left on the Belbek base.

“We are worried. But we will not give up our base,” said Capt. Nikolai Syomko, an air force radio electrician holding an AK47 and patrolling the back of the compound. He said the soldiers felt they were being held hostage, caught between Russia and Ukraine. There were no other reports of significant armed confrontations Tuesday in Ukraine.

The new Ukrainian leadership in Kiev, which Putin does not recognise, has accused Moscow of a military invasion in Crimea, which the Russian leader denies.

Ukraine’s prime minister expressed hope Tuesday that a negotiated solution could be found. Arseniy Yatsenyuk told a news conference that both governments were talking again, albeit slowly.

“We hope that Russia will understand its responsibility in destabilising the security situation in Europe, that Russia will realise that Ukraine is an independent state and that Russian troops will leave the territory of Ukraine,” he said.

In his hour-long meeting with reporters Tuesday, Putin said Russia had no intention of annexing Crimea, while insisting its residents have the right to determine the region’s status in a referendum later this month. Crimean tensions, Putin said, “have been settled”.

He said massive military manoeuvres Russia had been doing involving 150,000 troops near Ukraine’s border had been previously planned and were unrelated to the current situation in Ukraine. Russia announced that Putin had ordered the troops back to their bases.

Putin hammered away at his message that the West was to blame for Ukraine’s turmoil, saying its actions were driving Ukraine into anarchy. He warned that any sanctions the United States and EU place on Russia for its actions will backfire.

Russia’s foreign ministry derided American threats of punitive measures as a “failure to enforce its will and its vision of the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ side of history” — a swipe at President Barack Obama’s statement Monday that Russia was “on the wrong side of history”.

The EU was to hold an emergency summit Thursday on whether to impose sanctions.

Moscow has insisted that the Russian military deployment in Crimea has remained within the limits set by a bilateral agreement on a Russian military base there. At the United Nations in New York, Russia’s ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, said Russia was entitled to deploy up to 25,000 troops in Crimea under that agreement.

The Russian president also asserted that Ukraine’s 22,000-strong force in Crimea had dissolved and its arsenals had fallen under the control of the local government. He didn’t explain if that meant the Ukrainian soldiers had just left their posts or if they had switched allegiances from Kiev to the local pro-Russian government.

Putin accused the West of using fugitive President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision in November to ditch a pact with the EU in favour of closer ties with Russia to fan the protests that drove him from power and plunged Ukraine into turmoil.

“I have told them a thousand times ‘Why are you splitting the country?’” he said.

While he said he still considers Yanukovych to be Ukraine’s legitimate president, he acknowledged that the fallen leader has no political future — and said Russia gave him shelter only to save his life. Ukraine’s new government wants to put Yanukovych on trial for the deaths of over 80 people during protests last month in Kiev.

Putin had withering words for Yanukovych, with whom he has never been close.

Asked if he harbours any sympathy for the fugitive president, Putin replied that he has “quite opposite feelings”.

CARACAS — Venezuelan protesters ripped a dead tree from a vacant lot and dragged it down the street to rebuild a barricade in a Caracas neighbourhood that has become an epicentre of unrest.

Others in masks grabbed shields made out of aluminum siding or television satellite dishes, ready for another night of throwing rocks and firebombs at riot police who lob tear gas or fire buckshot.

After three weeks of clashes, hardcore anti-government protesters say they honed their skills through battle experience, lessons from comrades in another opposition bastion and by watching Internet videos of clashes in places like Ukraine and Egypt.

This battle-hardened group, which has numbered in the hundreds on some nights, has ignored calls by opposition leaders to keep protests against President Nicolas Maduro peaceful.

They use giant slingshots to fling rocks. They try to burst motorcycle tyres by throwing “miguelitos” — rubber hoses spiked with nails.

They blast paint at the windows of water-cannon trucks. Masks made out of plastic bottles are stuffed with a rag dipped in vinegar to counter the effects of tear gas.

“We have everything except guns,” said Adam, a 24-year-old university student who refused to give his last name as he held a thick, black log with a handle made out of an empty gas canister.

With a cigarette dangling from his lips, he rested the contraption on his shoulder like a bazooka.

“When the police get close, you grab it like this and swing it,” he said. “We learned how to make shields by looking at other protests” online.

They were at it again on Monday, tossing Molotov cocktails, throwing loud homemade explosives and using the giant slingshot against police who responded with tear gas.

Trash was set ablaze under an effigy of Maduro that hung from a traffic light.

Nobody was hurt this time, but the government says 18 people have been killed and some 260 injured since protests erupted in early February.

More protests

These protesters say this is the only way to change a government they blame for a soaring crime rate, 56 per cent inflation and chronic food shortages. Lately, they also accuse the government of violently repressing the demonstrations.

They have set up camp in Plaza Altamira, a longtime spot for opposition protests in the capital’s middle-class Chacao district, refusing to rest despite an extended Carnival holiday week that ends with Mardi Gras on Tuesday.

The protesters say they have learned much from their comrades in the western city of San Cristobal, where the movement began on February 4 in a protest against crime after a female student was sexually assaulted.

Maduro charges that the protests are a US-backed plot by “fascists” to overthrow his socialist government, just under a year since he was elected to succeed the late Hugo Chavez.

More than 1,000 people have been detained but most have since been released.

The opposition has called for new protests in Caracas on Tuesday and Saturday, while the government prepares to commemorate the anniversary of Chavez’s death on Wednesday.

In contrast, poorer neighbourhoods of Caracas that are bastions of Chavez loyalists have remained quiet.

Losing fear 

The protesters in Altamira say they are now better organised.

The front line is comprised of dozens of the most daring who line up shoulder to shoulder with shields while the back line brings them the rocks or Molotov cocktails.

First aid kits, water and food are kept at the Altamira Square.

“With experience, people lose fear,” said Valentina Huamani, an 18-year-old university communications student who is among those at the front line.

“When others see me, a woman, down there, then they join us,” she said, wearing a jacket in the colour of military fatigues.

Before the latest clash, the protesters had gathered in a festive atmosphere, with cars honking in support while a young man showed up dressed like Maduro with a fake moustache.

“The ideas is for more people to join us,” said Jonathan Hinds, a 32-year-old who had to close his travel company. “We aren’t bourgeois, we aren’t oligarchs, we aren’t fascists.”

KIRIKKALE, Turkey — Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday berated an Islamic cleric he accuses of plotting to wreck his government, as more voice recordings apparently intended to embarrass the Turkish leader were aired on the Internet.

Erdogan is locked in a power struggle with US-based Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen, a former ally he says is behind a stream of “fabricated” voice recordings purportedly revealing corruption in the prime minister’s inner circle.

Four more recordings have appeared on YouTube in the last two days, part of what Erdogan sees as a campaign to undermine his ruling centre-right AK Party before local elections on March 30 and a presidential poll due later this year.

Amid the allegations that have rattled financial markets and raised questions over Turkey’s political stability, President Abdullah Gul on Tuesday ordered a state audit of the country’s capacity to tackle corruption.

Rounding on the Gulen movement in an election campaign rally in the central Turkish city of Kirikkale, Erdogan, the country’s most popular politician, was in characteristically defiant mood.

“We will make them [Gulen’s movement] regret these coup undertakings... We will reveal their blackmail and threats one by one... Those who have betrayed this country will pay the price,” Erdogan told a crowd of about 5,000 supporters.

In one of the recordings leaked on Tuesday, Erdogan purportedly tells a well-known shipping magnate to appeal the result of a multi-billion-dollar tender to build six frigates after Koc Holding, Turkey’s biggest company, won a contract to build four of the warships in January 2013.

The contract was eventually awarded to the naval shipyards. A second contract to build a helicopter landing dock went to a Turkish-Spanish joint venture. The national warship project had initially favoured wholly domestic, private-sector producers.

Political meddling

Erdogan has publicly signalled a dislike for Koc Holding, suggesting that the company, whose output accounts for about 10 per cent of the economy, has meddled in politics. Koc and its subsidiaries have faced a series of fines, lawsuits and tax audits in recent years.

Koc could not be reached for comment on Tuesday. Erdogan’s office has declined to comment on the latest recordings.

Another voice recording, posted late on Monday, purports to be of Erdogan urging his justice minister to speed up a court case against Aydin Dogan, head of a family-run conglomerate seen as part of a secular elite which has had an often tense relationship with his Islamist-rooted government.

Dogan said in a statement carried by its newspaper Hurriyet that the conversation, if true, would mark a “clear interference in the judicial process” that it said risked shaking trust in the rule of law in Turkey. Erdogan’s office declined to comment.

Government officials say Gulen’s Hizmet network has been illegally tapping thousands of telephones in Turkey for years to concoct criminal cases against its enemies and try to influence government affairs. Gulen has denied the accusations.

At Tuesday’s rally in the AK Party’s conservative heartland — the men and the mostly headscarved women stood separately — there was no sign of any wavering in support for Erdogan as he battles the biggest challenge to his 11-year rule.

“I believe there is corruption but look at how much Turkey has progressed under the AK Party. We used to have to pay a lot of money in interest, but Erdogan has been investing in the country,” said Ali Osman Celik, 38, a shopkeeper.

Earlier in the day, President Gul said he had instructed the State Supervisory Council to examine regulations governing the wiretapping of communications as part of a review of Turkey’s capacity to tackle graft in state institutions.

Gul also asked the auditors to look at the process by which judges and prosecutors are chosen and to assess rules surrounding “state secrets”.

Last month, parliament approved a new law tightening control of the judiciary, a move Erdogan’s critics say is a further attempt to snuff out the corruption allegations after the government dismissed or reassigned thousands of police officers and hundreds of judges and prosecutors.

KIEV — Ukraine accused Russia on Monday of pouring more troops into Crimea as world leaders grappled with Europe’s worst standoff since the Cold War and the Moscow market plunged on fears of an all-out conflict.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said forces were needed in the flashpoint Black Sea peninsula until “the stabilisation of the situation” in the ex-Soviet nation and slammed Washington’s “unacceptable threats” against Moscow.

Crimea — the strategic host to tsarist and Kremlin navies since the 18th century — has been under de facto occupation by Moscow-backed forces since President Vladimir Putin won parliament’s authorisation on Saturday to send troops into Ukraine.

The price of oil surged over fears of a conflict while the Moscow market lost more than 12 per cent on a Black Monday of trading that saw the ruble establish historic lows.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague warned Russia of “consequences and costs” as he met Ukraine’s Western-backed but untested interim leaders in Kiev.

The world’s richest nations have already threatened to strip Moscow of its coveted seat at the Group of Eight for menacing its ex-Soviet neighbour.

But Europe and Washington appear to have limited options in dealing with Putin — a veteran strongman with mass domestic appeal who has cracked down on political freedoms and appears more interested in rebuilding vestiges of the Soviet Union than repairing relations with the West.

Ukraine has soared to the top of the global agenda even as the brutal conflict in Syria rages and talks on Iran’s nuclear drive enter their most sensitive stage.

“This cannot be a way in the 21st century to conduct international affairs,” Hague told reporters. “It is not an acceptable way to behave and there will be consequences and costs.”

The crisis on the eastern edge of Europe threatens to blow up into the biggest test to global diplomacy since the fall of the Berlin wall.

It first erupted in November when protests began against the pro-Kremlin regime over its scrapping of an EU pact and culminated in a week of carnage last month that claimed nearly 100 lives and saw the downfall of president Viktor Yanukovych — now living in exile in Russia.

“There was the [1962]Cuban missile crisis and the Soviet Union’s decision to send tanks into Prague [in 1968]. But in that era, we were effectively in a state of war,” said Alexei Malashenko of the Carnegie Moscow Centre.

Germany offered a rare glimmer of hope by announcing that Putin had agreed in telephone talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel Sunday to set up a contact group on Ukraine.

Western allies in NATO also said they wanted to send international observers to Ukraine while engaging Moscow in direct talks.

Washington added it would like to see a mission from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe  deployed in the nation of 46 million “immediately”.

‘Attacking human rights’ 

Russia offered no immediate response to any of the proposals — all backed by interim leaders in Kiev who are trying to pull Ukraine closer to the European Union after replacing the Yanukovych regime.

Lavrov said Kiev’s new leaders “intend to make use of the fruits of their victory to attack human rights and fundamental freedoms... of minorities”.

Crimea is now almost under complete control of Russian forces and local pro-Moscow militia who patrol both government buildings and the perimeters of Ukrainian barracks on the rugged Black Sea peninsula.

“All military bases in Crimea are blocked,” regional defence ministry spokesman Stanislav Seleznyov told AFP.

“All of the bases in Crimea are still under Ukrainian control. But they are surrounded,” the Ukranian defence official said.

The precarious situation for Kiev’s new leaders was underscored Sunday when Ukrainian navy commander Denis Berezovsky announced just a day after his appointment that he was switching allegiance to the pro-Russian authorities in Crimea after troops surrounded his building and cut off the electricity.

Crimea’s pro-Kremlin government chief Sergiy Aksyonov — appointed on Thursday after an armed raid on the region’s government building but who is not recognised by Kiev — immediately named Berezovsky as head of the peninsula’s own independent navy.

Ukraine’s Prime Minster Arseniy Yatsenyuk warned at the weekend that Ukraine was “on the brink of a disaster” and said any invasion by its vast eastern neighbour would mean “war”.

Market jitters 

The first business day since Russian senators authorised Putin to use force against Ukraine on Saturday saw Asian and European markets drop sharply and the Moscow exchange lose over 13 per cent.

Russia’s central bank unexpectedly hiked its main interest rate to 7 per cent from 5.5 per cent in a bit to halt a meteoric ruble decline that saw it hit record lows again the dollar on Monday.

Brent North Sea crude for April jumped $1.69 to $110.76 while New York’s main contract — West Texas Intermediate (WTI) — for April delivery gained $1.36 to $103.94 in Asian trade.

“A situation is emerging that could have profound circumstances for many major Russian companies,” Moscow’s Nord Capital financial advisory said in a research note.

Shares in Russia’s natural gas giant Gazprom tumbled by 12.5 per cent on uncertainty about whether the state-controlled company may be ordered to halt deliveries to Ukraine — and by consequence Western Europe — as a punitive step by the Kremlin against the new Kiev team.

“Europe [and Turkey] will likely strengthen their efforts to become less dependent on Russian energy,” Hamburg’s Berenberg Bank economist Holger Schmieding said in a research note.

G-7 condemns Russian ‘violation’ 

The White House on Sunday released a statement symbolically signed by the G-7 biggest industrialised nations — an economic grouping that unlike the G-8 excludes Moscow — condemning “the Russian Federation’s clear violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine”.

The G-7 ministers promised “strong financial backing” that US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said would probably be delivered through a programme overseen by the IMF.

US Secretary of State John Kerry also warned ahead of his arrival in Kiev on Tuesday that Moscow risked losing its G-8 seat over its “brazen act of aggression” in Ukraine.

Analysts believe Ukraine would face a David-and-Goliath struggle should the conflict escalate.

Russia’s army of 845,000 soldiers could easily overwhelm Ukraine’s force of 130,000 — half of them conscripts.

But Matthew Clements of Jane’s Intelligence Review also noted that “if the Ukrainian forces remain unified... they have some chance of holding Russia back in a full-combat situation for a considerable time”.

KUNMING, China — Defiant residents of the Chinese city where 29 people died in a mass stabbing queued to donate blood Monday, while others vented anger at what authorities say was a terrorist attack by separatists from Xinjiang.

Chinese Internet users accused the US of double standards after Washington condemned the bloody rampage in Kunming by knife-wielding attackers but refrained from calling it a terrorist incident. More than 130 were injured.

Officials have blamed separatists from Xinjiang, the far western Chinese region home to the mostly Muslim Uighur ethnic minority.

Foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters: “Some East Turkestan flags were found on the scene”, referring to a group Beijing regards as a separatist terrorist movement.

Hong Kong broadcaster Phoenix TV showed images of a dark blue flag embroidered with the Islamic declaration of faith, said to have been found by police.

In Kunming, a taxi driver said she would stay away from the train station where the violence occurred, underscoring the tense sense of fear in the southwestern city.

She then launched into an anti-Uighur tirade.

“I won’t let them into my taxi. They are all drug addicts and everyone outside Xinjiang distrusts them,” she said, refusing to give her name.

“They are trouble. Most people thought like this before, so you can imagine what people think now,” she added, pounding her steering wheel for emphasis.

Xinjiang is periodically hit by violent clashes between members of the Uighur minority and security forces, which China blames on terrorist groups seeking independence for the region.

But attacks targeting civilians are rarer and almost unheard of in Yunnan province, which is more than 1,600 kilometres from Xinjiang and a popular tourist destination.

The attack, which prompted shock and outrage nationwide, has been dubbed “China’s 9/11” by state media and security has been tightened at transport terminals across the country.

It came just days before the annual meeting of China’s parliament. An associated debating chamber session opened Monday with a period of silence for the victims.

Police maintained a prominent presence on the streets of Kunming, two days after attackers slashed indiscriminately at people queueing to buy tickets at the busy railway terminal.

Armed guards remained on duty at the station, although the temporary waiting area that was sealed off Sunday had reopened.

‘Too much pain’ 

Outside the large open shelter where witnesses said the carnage began, people laid flowers and wreaths around a few dozen burnt-out candles left over from a vigil the previous night. Plainclothes security patrolled the area.

Three kilometres away in Kunming’s eastern suburbs, around 50 people queued to give blood at a temporary donation centre.

“I came here to donate blood... because these terrorists are too cruel as they inflicted too much pain on the common people,” said Hu Jiaquan, 35, as he waited to give his first ever donation.

“All citizens should use [our] own strength to defeat these extremists,” he added.

Another donor, Yin Jiang, told AFP: “They are so cruel that they took action against elderly, women and children.”

The US embassy in China said on social media that it condemned the “terrible and senseless act of violence in Kunming” and expressed condolences to those affected by what it called a “tragedy”.

But thousands of Chinese Internet users slammed the US for refusing to follow China in defining the attack as terrorism, comparing the knifings to last year’s bombing of the Boston Marathon as well as to 9/11.

“Would Americans say the same thing about similar attacks on their own territory?” Ma Xiaolin, a website administrator, asked in a typical comment on Sina Weibo, a Chinese equivalent of Twitter.

Xinjiang already has a heavy police presence. Analysts say any crackdown by authorities, coupled with public anger at Uighurs, could lead to increased repression of the minority, potentially locking China into a vicious cycle of increasing violence.

Dilshat Raxit, a spokesman for the World Uyghur Congress, an exile group that Beijing says supports terrorism, expressed fears Monday that the attack would be used as “a new political excuse to suppress Uighurs”.

KIEV — Ukraine warned Sunday it was on the brink of disaster and called up military reservists after Russia’s threat to invade its Western-leaning neighbour risked sparking the worst crisis since the Cold War.

US President Barack Obama and his Western allies took turns admonishing Russia as Ukraine looked on the brink of losing control of Crimea with the defection of its navy commander to pro-Kremlin forces who have tightened their grip on the Black Sea peninsula.

World leaders huddled for urgent consultations across global capitals after Russia’s parliament voted Saturday to allow President Vladimir Putin to send troops into the ex-Soviet state — a decision Obama branded a “violation of Ukrainian sovereignty”.

US Secretary of State John Kerry upped the stakes for Putin by bluntly warning that Moscow risked relinquishing its coveted place among the Group of Eight (G-8) nations if its sabre rattling did not halt.

Ukraine’s new Western-backed Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk — in power for just a week following the overthrow of a pro-Russian regime — also warned that any invasion “would mean war and the end of all relations between the two countries”.

“We are on the brink of a disaster,” Yatsenyuk told the nation of 46 million in a televised address.

Pro-Moscow gunmen who are widely believed to be acting under Kremlin orders intensified their control Sunday over large swathes of a strategic peninsula that has housed Russian navies since the 18th century.

Witnesses said Russian soldiers had moved out of their bases and blocked about 400 Ukrainian marines in the eastern port city of Feodosiya. AFP reporters saw a similar presence of troops outside a Ukrainian military installation near the Crimean capital Simferopol and other locations.

But the biggest blow to the new Kiev leaders came when Ukrainian Navy Commander Denis Berezovsky announced a day after his appointment that he was switching allegiance to the pro-Russian authorities in Crimea after gunmen surrounded his building and cut off its electricity.

Crimea’s pro-Kremlin government chief Sergiy Aksyonov — installed in power Thursday after an armed raid on the region’s government building and not recognised by Kiev — immediately named Berezovsky as head of the peninsula’s own independent navy.

Full combat alert 

Fears of Russia’s first invasion of a neighbour since a brief 2008 confrontation with Georgia prompted the largely untested interim team in Kiev to put its military on full combat alert and announce the call-up of all reservists.

The vast country on the eastern edge of Europe would face a David-and-Goliath struggle should the conflict escalate. Russia’s army of 845,000 soldiers could easily overwhelm Ukraine’s force of 130,000 — half of them conscripts.

Putin said it was his duty to protect ethnic Russians in Crimea and southeastern swathes of Ukraine that have ancient ties to Moscow and look on Kiev’s new pro-EU leaders with disdain.

Russian officials also argued they had no need to ask the UN Security Council for permission — as Putin had demanded for any Western action in Syria — because the well-being of their own citizens was at stake.

NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen told Russia during urgent talks in Brussels that its movement of troops “threatens peace and security in Europe”.

German Frank-Walter Steinmeier spoke ominously of preventing “a new division of Europe” while France and Britain called for negotiations between Moscow and Kiev — either directly or through the United Nations.

The most immediate response to Russia’s actions came when Washington and its Western allies pulled out of this week’s preparatory meetings for the June G-8 summit in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi.

Kerry went one step further, warning Putin that “he is not going have a Sochi G-8, he may not even remain in the G-8 if this continues.”

Sochi hosted last month’s $51-billion Winter Olympic Games extravaganza that along with the football World Cup in 2018 are meant to highlight Russia’s return to prosperity and global influence under Putin’s rule.

Russia was admitted to the G-8 in 1998 in recognition of the late president Boris Yeltsin’s democratic reforms — a spot the Kremlin views as recognition of its post-Soviet might.

‘Candid’ Obama-Putin exchange 

Events have moved rapidly since a three-month crisis in culturally splintered Ukraine — long fought over by Moscow and the West — sparked by pro-Kremlin president Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to spurn a historic pact with the European Union in favour of closer ties with Russia.

It culminated in a week of carnage last month that claimed nearly 100 lives and led to Yanukovych’s ouster.

The Kremlin appeared stunned by the loss of its ally and Kiev’s subsequent vow to seek EU membership — a decision that would shatter Putin’s dream of reassembling a powerful economic and military post-Soviet bloc.

The White House said Obama told Putin in a “candid and direct” exchange his actions in Crimea were a “breach of international law”.

The Kremlin’s account of Putin’s conversation with Obama was equally blunt.

It said Putin flatly told the US leader that Russia “reserves the right to protect its interests and those of the Russian-speaking population” if violence in Ukraine spread.

The Kremlin said Putin had also told German Chancellor Angela Merkel late Sunday that Russia’s response to the “relentless threat of acts of violence from ultranationalist forces... [was] fully adequate”.

Analysts called Ukraine the most serious crisis to test the West’s relations with Moscow since the 1991 breakup of the USSR.

“The damage to Russia’s relations with the West will be deep and lasting, far worse than after the Russian-Georgian war,” Eugene Rumer and Andrew Weiss of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace wrote in a report.

“Think 1968, not 2008,” they said in reference to the Soviet Union’s decision to send tanks into Prague to suppress a pro-democracy uprising.

Pro-Kremlin sentiments in Crimea remained in evidence Sunday amid a sea of Russian flags.

“Crimea is Russia,” one elderly lady told AFP in front of a statue of Soviet founder Lenin that dominates a square next to the occupied parliament building in the regional capital Simferopol.

 ‘We will not surrender’ 

The mood in Kiev was radically different as about 50,000 people massed on Independence Square — the crucible of both the latest wave of demonstrations and the 2004 Orange Revolution that first nudged Kiev on a westward path — in protest at Putin’s latest threat.

“We will not surrender,” the huge crowd chanted under grey skies.

Ukraine’s prime minister had assured the nation Saturday he was “convinced” Russia would not launch an offensive because Moscow realised it would put an end to relations between two neighbours with centuries of shared history.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also said Saturday that “for the moment, this decision (to invade) has not been taken.”

KUNMING, China — China Sunday promised tough punishment for knife-wielding attackers who killed 29 people in an unprecedented train station rampage, blaming separatists from Xinjiang, as witnesses described a city in shock.

Victims spoke of black-clad attackers slashing indiscriminately as people queued to buy tickets late Saturday at Kunming station, in an incident that lasted about half an hour.

More than 130 were wounded in the attack in the city in the southwestern province of Yunnan, prompting shock and outrage nationwide. Buses and taxis ferried people to hospital.

A shop worker told AFP some of the victims took refuge in her store.

“Many were crying and some looked like they had been cut. We were terrified. Everyone in Kunming is still in shock,” she said.

Police shot dead at least four attackers, arrested one and were hunting for more, said the official Xinhua news agency, which in a commentary called the incident “China’s 9/11” and a “severe crime against the humanity”.

China’s security chief Meng Jianzhu, who rushed to Kunming to oversee the operation, promised “all-out efforts” to “severely punish terrorists according to the law”, Xinhua said.

He “urged forcible measures to crack down on violent terrorism activities”, it added.

The Kunming city government said the attack was orchestrated by separatists from the northwest region of Xinjiang, Xinhua reported.

Xinjiang, a vast area home to the mostly-Muslim Uighur minority, is periodically hit by violent clashes between locals and security forces but attacks targeting civilians are rarer.

Attacks are almost unheard of in Yunnan, more than 1,600 kilometres from Xinjiang and a popular tourist destination.

The attack comes months after three members of the same Xinjiang family crashed their car into crowds of tourists in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, the symbolic heart of the Chinese state, killing two people. They then set the vehicle on fire, killing themselves, according to authorities.

It also came days before delegates from across the communist-ruled country gather in Beijing for the annual meeting of the National People’s Congress, the rubber-stamp parliament.

Major Chinese train stations have security and identity checkpoints on entry.

Barry Sautman, an expert on ethnic politics in China at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said the attack had “high symbolic value”.

“It shows that the organisation that carried it out is able to strike anywhere,” he told AFP.

‘Stabbing whoever 

they saw’ 

Victim Yang Haifei, who was wounded in the chest and back, told Xinhua he had been buying a ticket when the attackers approached.

“I saw a person come straight at me with a long knife and I ran away with everyone,” he said, while others “simply fell on the ground”.

Some who escaped were desperately searching for missing loved ones.

“I can’t find my husband, and his phone went unanswered,” Yang Ziqing was quoted as saying.

She had been waiting for her train to Shanghai when a knife-wielding man suddenly came at them, she said.

The attackers were dressed in similar black clothing, the semiofficial China News Service said, citing witnesses.

“A group of men carrying weapons burst into the train station plaza and the ticket hall, stabbing whoever they saw,” it said.

Photos posted on Sina Weibo — a Chinese version of Twitter — showed blood spattered across the station floor and medical staff crouching over bodies lying on the ground, although the images’ authenticity could not be verified.

Pictures on news portal 163.com also showed what it claimed was one of the attackers, lying on a stretcher surrounded by police.

Other online images showed spectacles, shoes and baggage strewn across the floor of the waiting room, behind police tape.

None of the victims were foreigners, Xinhua quoted officials as saying.

President Xi Jinping called for “all-out efforts” in the investigation and for the attackers to be punished “in accordance with the law”, the agency said.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon condemned “in the strongest terms” the “terrible attack on civilians”, his spokesman said in a statement, adding he “hopes that those responsible will be brought to justice”.

‘They will go to hell’ 

Many Weibo users expressed outrage. “Targeting ordinary people in a terrorist attack is disgraceful,” said one. “They have nothing to do with this issue.”

Li Chengpeng, a social commentator and government critic who has more than seven million followers, said: “No matter who did this, for what purpose, and no matter which race, to target innocent people at a train station is an evil choice. Their hearts will be punished and they will go to hell.”

Xinhua said in a commentary that the attack had shrouded “the whole nation in terror”.

“Mothers, sons and daughters were slaughtered by strangers,” it said. “Nothing justifies such a carnage against innocent civilians. A nationwide outrage has been stirred.”

Beijing maintains that unrest in Xinjiang is caused by terrorist groups seeking independence, including the overseas-based East Turkestan Islamic Movement.

But its strength and links to global terrorism are murky, and some experts say China exaggerates the threat to justify tough security measures in Xinjiang, where rights groups complain of widespread religious repression and economic discrimination.

In an e-mailed statement, Dilshat Raxit of the exiled World Uyghur Congress said there was “no justification for attacks on civilians” but added that discriminatory and repressive policies provoked “extreme measures” in response.

MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin won the green light from parliament Saturday to send troops into Ukraine after a bloody three-month uprising that swept new pro-EU leaders to power but sparked unrest in the pro-Kremlin Crimean peninsula.

The stark escalation to what threatens to blow up into the worst crisis in relations between Moscow and the West since the Cold War came as Kalashnikov-wielding militia hoisted the Russia flag over Crimean government buildings and seized control of the peninsula’s airports.

Putin’s shock decision to seek the upper house of parliament’s authorisation to use force in the ex-Soviet country of 46 million came less than a day after US President Barack Obama warned that any such action would carry “costs” for Moscow.

Putin had remained silent since Ukraine’s parliament on
February 22 ousted pro-Kremlin president Viktor Yanukovych — who has since fled to Russia — after a week of carnage in Kiev that claimed nearly 100 lives.

The ex-Soviet country’s bloodiest crisis since its 1991 independence erupted in November, when Yanukovych rejected an historic deal that would have opened Ukraine’s door to eventual EU membership in favour of tighter ties with old master Moscow.

On Saturday the Kremlin said Putin had asked the upper house to authorise force “in connection with the extraordinary situation in Ukraine and the threat to the lives of Russian citizens”.

“I submit to the Federation Council a request to use the armed forces of the Russian Federation on Ukrainian territory until the normalisation of the political situation in that country,” the Kremlin quoted Putin as saying.

Putin said Russia also had to protect servicemen from the Black Sea Fleet that is based in Crimea’s port town of Sevastopol “fully in line with an international accord”.

The Federation Council unanimously approved Putin’s request after a lightning-fast debate.

Upper chamber chair Valentina Matviyenko also ordered the council’s foreign affairs committee to ask Putin to recall the Russian ambassador from the United States.

Matviyenko suggested sending in a “limited contingent” — a phrase that mimicked the language used for the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

There was no immediate indication about the number of troops involved. A senior senator said that would be up to Putin.

Ukraine’s Defence Minister Igor Tenyukh had earlier told the new Cabinet’s first session that Russia had sent 30 armoured personnel carriers and 6,000 additional troops into Crimea to help local pro-Kremlin militia gain broader independence from the new pro-EU leaders in Kiev.

He accused Russia of acting “without warning or Ukraine’s permission”.

Crimea appeal for help 

Putin’s move came after an appeal for help from Crimea’s newly chosen premier, Sergiy Aksyonov — a ruler not recognised by Kiev and appointed by regional lawmakers after gunmen had seized the parliament building in the regional capital Simferopol on Thursday.

“I ask Russian President Vladimir Putin to help in ensuring peace and calm on the territory of Crimea,” Aksyonov said in an address broadcast in full by Russian state television.

Ukrainian boxer turned politician Vitali Klitschko responded to the Russian move by calling on parliament to ask interim President Oleksandr Turchynov to declare a “national mobilisation after the start of Russian aggression against Ukraine”.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague, who heads to Kiev on Sunday, said he had summoned the Russian ambassador to register his concerns over Moscow’s decision.

“This action is a potentially grave threat to the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine. We condemn any act of aggression against Ukraine,” Hague said.

But one top Russian foreign ministry official indicated Putin may pause before sending troops into Ukraine.

“The agreement that the president received... does not mean that this right will be realised quickly,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin told the state-run RIA Novosti news agency.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the same agency that “for the moment, this decision has not been taken”.

Obama warning 

Obama warned Putin Friday that “there will be costs for any military intervention in Ukraine”.

A senior US official separately told AFP that Obama and some key European leaders could skip June’s G-8 summit in Sochi if Moscow’s forces became more directly involved in Ukraine.

Putin’s request for force authorisation came after a flurry of diplomatic efforts to resolve what threatens to become the most dire crisis to hit Moscow’s relations with the West since the Cold War.

Britain’s Hague said he had urged a “de-escalation in Crimea” in a telephone conversation with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, while Germany and France also voiced concern.

Kiev’s new leaders have grappled with the dual threats of economic collapse and secession by regions that had backed Yanukovych.

The threat of a debt default that Kiev leaders warn could come as early as next week increased further when Russia’s state-owned Gazprom — often accused of being wielded as a weapon by the Kremlin against uncooperative ex-Soviet states — warned that it may be forced to hike the price it charges Ukraine for natural gas.

“The debt is $1.549 billion, it is huge,” Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov told the RIA Novosti news agency.

“Clearly, with this debt Ukraine may not be able to keep its discount [to market price] for the gas.”

Ukraine won a one-third discount from Gazprom under a deal signed by Yanukovych with Putin that also saw Russia promise to buy $15 billion of government debt.

Ukraine’s new leaders have said that the country needs $35 billion over the coming two years to keep the economy afloat.